this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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There are tech illiterate people in every generation, but they definitely seemed more prevalent in the boomer generation. In my experience it's Boomers > Gen X > Zoomers > Millenials in terms of most to least technologically incompetent. Always suspected millennials are usually more comfortable with tech because they grew up with it, and it grew up with them.
For older generations, especially boomers, I figure they were more set in their ways and for many (but not all, obviously) it was hard to adapt. For Zoomers, I think it was just assumed that they'd just be inherently good so there were many things they were never actually taught (though many of them learned for themselves because they are nerds, which is pretty great if you ask me). Anyways, that's my theory on generational tech literacy.
I'm a xennial, and i think one of the key characteristics of my generation is that we grew up with tech becoming omnipresent, but it was also non user friendly tech.
We started having PCs young, but we really had to know how to build our systems, it was much less plug and play. We grew up with visual OSs, but configuring that shit was not intuitive at all. Or outright broken (looking at you Win ME). We had to troubleshoot, fix, learn, read and test just to get our tech working.
Younger generations grew up with tech omnipresent yes, but tech that mostly works intuitively - you barely ever have to really figure shit out, fix it or reconfigure it.
Just my 2 cents!
Yeah, once we had invented proper tablets and smartphones, those things are so intuitive that I have seen videos of monkeys figuring out how to use them.
We got the sweet spot. Having to know how to program the VCR and cable boxes gave us a leg up on troubleshooting, and DOS just sealed the deal. Never thought I would be thankful for all those frustrating days.
Anybody else here remember being the kid that knew how to set up VCRs for their grandparents and parents? LOL
I learned how the cables worked so that I could get my NES to work on the TV. Sometimes you'd have to wire it through the VCR and so I learned how the VCR worked. Then I was a wizard to the old people
That is about the only animal testing I approve of.
Can't wait for companies to put "So easy to use, even a monkey could do it" sticker on their tablets.
To add in to it, a lot of the experience during the formative years was with desktop computers. Consoles were there, but had far less capabilities. Handheld devices were generally more expensive compared to today and worse to use.
So you've got a case where young adults today have to work on a computer platform completely foreign to them while young adults 20 years ago usually had 5 - 10 years experience as a user on that platform.
Sounds like a pretty accurate take to me.
A lot of current users aren't ever exposed to the underlying tech. They only use a few applications. The ideal device for them is a tablet (or a ChromeBook). They know next to nothing about files, networks, most aspects of hardware (except the bling factor, maybe).
It's both a good and a bad thing.
I have two older siblings that are xennials, and I would say people born from about the late 70’s to the early 90’s represent the peak of technological literacy. It’s almost like a bell curve… the further you get away from each end of that range, the more technologically incompetent (on average) people are.
In my social circle, none of the 15-25 hav the slightest idea how to work a computer (no, wait, there's one out of the six or seven). So they all come to the nearly 60 year old me that has to explain to them again what a directory is.
Yeah, not being able to touch-type on a keyboard seems to be a skill many don't develop/aren't taught too. Basic stuff just gets skipped over because it's just assumed young people are good with tech (probably a holdover from raising millennials)
The typing thing is interesting. I'm old enough that I learned to type on an IBM Selectric typewriter in the early 1990s (we had Apple IIs in the "computer lab" - but there were two rooms full of typewriters for this class). I did well in general in high school, but I took typing much more seriously than many other classes, because I hadn't yet learned it on my own, and I knew how useful it would be in life. My classmates thought I was nuts (again, I'm sure). But that was one high school class that definitely did help me in "the real world".
So now, despite the ubiquity of computers, it seems they aren't teaching typing.
I'm Gen X and credit playing video games for most of my self-taught knowledge on how computers work. My first computer was an Apple IIe, which didn't require much more than putting disks in and typing startup commands, but when we got a Windows 3.1 PC next, I had to learn about file systems and troubleshooting when things inevitably went wrong. To this day, most of the computer stuff I've learned was from trying to get games working.
Yeah, PC gaming was a pretty significant motivator for me to learn all sorts of tech related skills.
And the limited experience I have with Linux is from getting my Raspberry Pi working. I even posted about having a problem and learned about "sudo." (it worked)
GenXer here. I’m not tech illiterate, except when it comes to social media. Then it’s more of a Luddite thing, because in 2007-8, I worked with early Facebook APIs (graph bullshit) and developed a deep hatred for Zuckerberg and his shitty website.
I think the nerdy Gen X are a lot more technical than the nerdy Zoomers because we had to know more to use early PCs as kids. But it also meant a lot of us didn’t get into it until a bit later in life (or to make a Buck before the various don’ dot-com bubbles burst).
I'm gen z and I've noticed the same thing. Nearly all gen z use computers, but because its so accessible and simplified they are nearly all tech illiterate.
The people most knowledgeable about tech that I've met have been gen x. A lot of them are unfortunately some of the least knowledgeable though because they had no experience with computers until later in life.
Gen X built the Internet you're using actually, and most of the server infrastructure that runs the world.
A select few, sure. But as far as I’ve noticed, Gen X (especially the older half) are like Boomer-Lite, and not just from a technological-literacy standpoint, either.
Same. It's funny that the things that come naturally to Zoomers are intimidating to me and vice-versa. Of course, a big part of that is that I didn't grow up with social media and therefore have no interest in it (except for message board style things like Lemmy.)
I don't know, I had my dad on the phone the other day. He was explaining his backup routine and rotation between two different location. He is 65, worked most of his life with unreliable OS. Sensitive hard drives, floppies etc. He know how to make sure his data is safe.
There are absolutely boomers who are well versed in tech, shit some of them helped invent it, but there's definitely a trend of boomers in general being tech illiterate.